Mental health advocates slam blogger Olivar over resurfaced anti-UP activists ‘suicide’ vlog

Pro-Duterte blogger Drew Olivar, who is in danger of facing charges for a bomb scare post on his Facebook page, has once again earned public ire — this time from a community of mental health advocates.

Dr. Raymond John Naguit, who chairs the Youth for Mental Health Coalition (Y4MH), slammed an old vlog where Olivar can be seen encouraging student activists of the University of the Philippines (UP) to just "hang themselves" from the school’s symbolic Oblation statue.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Naguit said Olivar’s remark “leaves a bad taste in the mouth,” especially for those who lost friends and children to suicide.

Naguit noted that mental health advocacy groups "work so hard to fight the stigma and promote responsible means of reporting mental health” and that “it is just to demand that we give the topics suicide and self harm the appropriate seriousness and society that they deserve.”

Bringing up Olivar’s “track record,” Naguit recalled the “sexist” "pe-de-ralismo" video the blogger made with Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, along with a more recent controversial video made by the pair where Olivar pretended to use sign language.

Most recently, Olivar figured in another fiasco in which a "bomb scare" post he claimed to have made out of concern for the public resulted in him being investigated by authorities for alleged violation of Presidential Decree 1727.

The mental health advocate asked: "Bakit pag ang gobyerno o kaalyado ng administrasyon, ay hirap na hirap tayo sa pagsingil ng accountability?"

The Department of Health, together with the World Health Organization, and Natasha Goulbourn Foundation, launched in 2016 Hopeline, a 24/7 suicide prevention hotline, in observance of the National Suicide Prevention Awareness Day. — MDM, GMA News

If you are having thoughts of suicide, please seek help or call these numbers:

Hopeline

(02) 804-4673
0917-5584673
2919 for Globe and TM subscribers
Manila Lifeline Centre

(02) 8969191
0917 854 9191